Robert Niles: February 2011 archive
Don't forget about health care when thinking about expenses in starting an online news business
February 28, 2011
What's the next step in cultivating a diverse and healthy online news industry?Health insurance.
Buying health insurance remains one of the crippling obstacles standing between would-be news entrepreneurs and the realization of their visions. America's system of employer-provided health care effectively creates an added cost on every job created in the United States, whether a news company creates it by hiring you, or you create one by starting your own publication.
As enthusiastic a cheerleader for news entrepreneurship as I've been over the years, I dread the moment in every conversation I have with a journalist working on his or her start-up when I ask "So, what are you going to do about health insurance and benefits?"
It's the part of a traditional job that most of us take for granted, but that we lose when we set out on our own. Too many of us forget about the expense of benefits, especially health insurance premiums, when we account for what we'll need to pay to launch and run an online news business.
And they are expensive. More...
4 Comments | 
Archive Link
Writing tip: Keep it short, even when there's no copy desk to force you
February 25, 2011
Here's a tip for young, or beginning, bloggers. Or even for old pros who need a reminder.Just because your blogging tool lets you ramble on forever doesn't mean your audience wants to read it.
The New York Times' Paul Krugman wrote:
One of the hardest things about writing the column, as opposed to blogging, is the length constraint. It’s really, really hard to say something meaningful in a limited space. And yet, that constraint has its virtues: it forces you to be concise, to figure out what you really need to say and skip the rest, to find turns of phrase that are shorter and usually plainer. And my experience is that the process of doing all that almost always makes the thing read better.
I think Twitter's has helped sharpen writers' skills over the past few years. Think Krugman's 800-word cap is tight? Try 140 characters. But too many writers switch mental gears when they close their Twitter application and open their blogging CMS.
Not everyone need write as tightly as Atrios, but why not make an extra effort to focus your words? Concentrate the power of your work into fewer words, so that they're more likely to drive your audience to act upon them - to share them and promote your work with others. Dilute your work into too many words, and your audience will get bored and drift away.
Try this: For the next piece you post on the Internet, stop yourself before you hit the "submit" key. Copy and paste your words into some text editor. Count the words. Now try to cut half of them.
Can you make the same points? Keep all the important information? More...
2 Comments | Archive Link
Imagining the 21st century's digital bookstore
February 21, 2011
Last week's announcement that Borders would close 200 stores across the country might have seemed to some the inevitable next step in the publishing industry's conversion from printed to digital media. As more and more Americans choose to order books online, or to switch to e-books, they don't need to patronize physical bookstores any longer.But any sales person ought to know that need and want are two different things.
I can find a much larger selection of books by firing up my Web browser than heading over to my local Borders, which is among those scheduled to close. I don't need that Borders in order to find and buy the books which interest me.
But, as an enthusiastic reader, I want to have an excuse to get out of the house once in a while and spend some time alone with fresh books and magazines. My middle-school, book-worm daughter wants a place to hang out with her friends after school. No, we don't need a physical place to buy books any longer, but we want that alternative.
Borders seems to have made the same mistake as countless other old media publishers and retailers have over the past decade - viewing digital and print as two separate products and businesses, rather than finding a way to naturally blend the two. So I'd like to devote this post to a thought exercise: How to design a physical bookstore for the 21st century - one that would survive and profit in a marketplace driven by digital media?
Physical bookstores offer two advantages, that I see, over virtual ones. First is the out-of-home, social experience of being in a bookstore. While that's not always a plus for people who want to download a book in a hurry, plenty of us enjoy being in a physical space with other book lovers.
The second is the ability to sit down and read through as much of any book as we want before deciding to buy. That's the element I think a 21st century bookstore needs to find a way to replicate.
Imagine entering a store where there are no (or very few) books on the shelves, but an open WiFi network that allowed you to connect to and read, watch, play and listen to that store's entire inventory of books, newspapers, magazines, games, movies, TV shows and recordings. So long as you physically remained within range of that network, you could read and watch all you want, but nothing would stay on your device after you left unless you purchased it. More...
12 Comments | Archive Link
Can a content business scale on the Internet?
February 18, 2011
Can a content business scale on the Internet?That's the question that's bedeviled an uncounted number of start-ups, and established businesses, in the decade and a half of publishing's Internet era. While many individual writers and small, community start-ups have found their way to ramen profitability online, big businesses (and aspiring ones!) continue to look for the formula that consistently allows them to build large-scale, national chains of profitable content-driven publications online, as companies such as Gannett and Scripps did with printed newspapers in the past century.
Two recent events involving AOL have brought this question back into my mind. The first was the leak earlier this month of The AOL Way, a strategy for the company's writers to develop more (and more popular) articles on its various websites.
Critics derided the strategy as reducing writing to mere formula, with some comparing AOL to Demand Media.
Later this month came the second event, as AOL bought Huffington Post and appointed HuffPo founder Arianna Huffington to oversee AOL's editorial operations. HuffPo's given its share of critics the vapors, too, including the LA Times' Tim Rutten who derided HuffPo as "a galley rowed by slaves and commanded by pirates." (FWIW, HuffPo pays for its wire feeds of content from other news sources, just as the Times and other newspapers do. It also pays a staff of professional reporters, in addition to hosting blogs written by readers.)
So let's revisit the question: Can a content business scale on the Internet? Can you run a large-scale, profitable news publication online? And if so, does it have to rely on hard, search-engine-friendly formulas or free writers to survive? More...
1 comment | Archive Link
Should anyone have a 'kill switch' for the Internet?
February 3, 2011
The recent events in Egypt remind journalists not only of the physical peril inherent in covering conflict, but the evolving danger that journalists' reporting can be kept from reaching the public at all.Egypt's crumbling regime has resorted to traditional techniques for silencing reporters, including beatings and arrests. (Reporters also have been assaulted by pro-government thugs during the ongoing anti-government protests.) But it was the Egyptian government's action to cut access to the Internet early during the protests that also should prompt journalists around the world to take a closer look at their government's attitude toward controlling the Internet.
Even here in the United States, there's far from political unanimity on how the government should address the Internet. Consumer advocates want to the Federal Communications Commission to expand to wireless services its rules blocking Internet providers from slowing access to content providers who don't pay telecommunication companies an extra fee, beyond hosting and bandwidth charges. The telcos want the government to butt out and quit preventing them from finding new ways to make money to maintain and expand their networks. The Department of Homeland Security is shutting down websites (including ones outside the US) that link to live streams of copyrighted televise broadcasts.
And some members of Congress have proposed legislation that would allow the government to shut down parts of the Internet in a "national emergency."
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told Wired.com last week that she might reintroduce the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010 in this Congressional session. The bill is designed to legally enable the federal government to shut down parts of the Internet under cyber attack - creating an effective firewall between comprised networks and the rest of the Internet.
I can't imagine not wanting to preserve the integrity of the Internet in a time of crisis, when efficient communication can become even more important. But giving anyone in the federal government a "kill switch" for the Internet ought to concern any advocate for free speech, especially in light of what Egypt has done. More...
No comments | Archive Link
Two authors' stories illustrate why some journalists profit online, and others fail
February 1, 2011
An e-mail and a tweet last week pointed me to two blog posts that expressed completely different ways that two writers have addressed the challenge of a changing media marketplace. Their differing attitudes and approaches to publishing in the Internet era explain to me why one writer is enjoying unprecedented success, while the other writer laments a declining career.Let's start with this post from author Joe Konrath, about his experience transitioning from a traditional book-publishing contract to self-publishing e-books.
"With self-publishing, in a single month," he wrote, "I was able to earn the same amount of money it took me four and a half years to earn through traditional publishing."
He crunched the numbers:
So far this month, I've sold over 18,000 ebooks on Kindle.When I include Smashwords, Createspace, and Barnes and Noble, my income for January will be about $42,000.
Last January, I made $2,295 on Kindle, and I was amazed I could actually pay my mortgage on books NY rejected.
"Amazed" is no longer strong enough a word.
In just 12 months, I've seen a 2000% increase in income. And ebooks are still only 11% of the book market.
What happens when they're 15%? 30%? 75%?
And yet, I still see some writers clinging to the notion that getting a book contract with a Big 6 publisher is the way to go.
But money isn't the only reason ebooks self-publishing is preferable.
Konrath goes on to detail the thousands of hours he spent driving to bookstores around the country, chatting up customers as he tried to convinced anyone to buy his books. His publisher didn't want him to tour - since that would require paying bookstores - but without a tour, he couldn't connect with consumers.
I've heard from friends in the book business that publishing deals are getting even worse for authors: less promotion, less support and small advances and payments.
Konrath chose not to accept the decline of his career. Instead, he chose to self-publish, using low-cost e-books instead of the expensive, but more traditional, print vanity press. More...
5 Comments | Archive Link
RSS Feed